The present invention relates to medicine or supplement bottles with caps and sealed foil tops.
Many food and pharmaceutical products and others are packaged in containers with screw-on caps having an adhesively attached tamper evident membrane over the opening. The seals may be aluminum foil, cardboard, or plastic membranes. Some seals have integral removal tabs which may be difficult to grasp especially by arthritis afflicted senior citizens. In any case, after the cap is initially unscrewed, the membrane must next be removed before the product can be used.
Often, consumers must resort to the use of improvised tools at hand such as knives, screwdrivers, or scissors to penetrate the membrane and either cut it or create a hole in it so that it can be torn and removed by hand. This creates an inconvenient and dangerous situation. Clearly, a safe convenient means for penetrating the membrane should be attached to or part of the screw cap.
The prior art reveals two US patents (U.S. Pat. Nos. 8,616,090 and 8,844,406) of Joseph Ferraro entitled Bottle Seal Breaker, which show four embodiments of membrane seal breakers which are part of the bottle caps. The present invention (also of Applicant Joseph Ferraro) is yet another embodiment which is an improvement over the prior art.
The first embodiment of the cited patents (U.S. Pat. Nos. 8,616,090 and 8,844,406 of Ferraro) illustrated in FIGS. 1-3 of Ferraro '090 and '406 has a straight notch on the bottom edge of the cap forming a short outer segment used for penetrating the membrane. While easy to manufacture and safe, it requires a bottle cap with enough bottom extension beyond the start of the threads to provide a notch deep enough for penetration without interfering with smooth thread operation.
The second embodiment of the cited patents (FIGS. 4 and 5 of Ferraro '090 and '406) shows a curved slot near the top surface of the cap on the side that is used for membrane penetration. Two aspects which add cost to the cap of this embodiment are the use of a more complex mold with a movable feature to form the side slot and the need for extra material thickness on the side of the cap to provide the required slot depth.
The third and fourth embodiments of the cited patents (FIGS. 6 and 7 of Ferraro '090 and '406) use pointed cap extensions to form membrane penetrating elements. The material of the extensions is a slight extra cost enhancer, while the pointed extensions are a hazard that may cause scratches in use.
The present invention overcomes all of these shortcomings.
An object of this invention is to provide a bottle seal breaker cap which is adaptable to a wide variety of bottle caps, easily manufactured, safe, and economical.
It is also an object of the present invention to provide a bottle seal breaker cap which is easy to use and safe to handle.
Other objects will become apparent from the following description of the present invention.
The present invention is a bottle seal breaker cap which is adaptable to a wide variety of bottle caps. It has one or more notches, preferably a single notch, extending up from the bottom peripheral lip of a bottle cap, including a cutting surface deep enough to cut into a sealed foil substrate installed for sanitary reasons on top of the body of a medicine or supplement bottle.
It is a notch in the form of a right triangle on the bottom edge of the bottle cap. The short vertical wall is angled to form a dull cutting edge while the longer sloping side is full material width. In fact, the notch can be molded in a simple mold as part of the cap. It adds no time nor extra material in the manufacturing phase. The notch is adaptable to a wide variety of caps needing neither height nor thickness enhancement for operation. It is safe in that it provides one rounded point at the bottom edge of the cap which is not a location of frequent finger contact. The notch fits in such a manner as to not impinge on the internal cap threads, and it even works on caps with multiple thread starts. The seal breaker of this invention is ergonomically designed for easy use; it is easy to align with the side of the membrane using the sloping edge as a guide. While the notch follows the circular bottom contour of the bottle cap, both the short vertical cutting edge and the longer sloping edge are seen as intersecting straight lines in a side elevation.
This invention is adaptable to bottle caps formed by injection molding using unscrewing molds, molds using collapsing cores, or molds using the bump-off method without secondary operations. The invention is also compatible with metal bottle caps, but secondary operations such as die cutting or grinding would be used to form the notch.
In alternate embodiments, the side elevations of the notch can show contours which deviate from straight lines. In fact, an infinite variety of contour shapes can be used. The cutting edge may be serrated. Concave arcuate contours of either the short cutting edge or the long sloping edge or both may be used to enhance the ergonomics or the aesthetics of the side notch. A single continuous contour can be used to form a notch. A notch formed as a shallow wide rectangular shape with a single pointed tooth in middle (as a single serration) can also be used. Other geometric shapes may be used as well, such as serrated edges, which are not shown
For example, the notched cut may assume any infinitely variable geometric shape for a cap with a notched opening extending up from a bottom edge of the bottle cap, which performs the same function of breaking a foil seal on top of a medicine or supplement bottle.
The present invention can best be understood in connection with the accompanying drawings. It is noted that the invention is not limited to the precise embodiments shown in drawings, in which:
The method of use for puncturing and then cutting a membrane is shown in
Bottle cap 30 in
Bottle cap 60 in
In the foregoing description, certain terms and visual depictions are used to illustrate the preferred embodiment. However, no unnecessary limitations are to be construed by the terms used or illustrations depicted, beyond what is shown in the prior art, since the terms and illustrations are exemplary only, and are not meant to limit the scope of the present invention.
It is further known that other modifications may be made to the present invention, without departing the scope of the invention, as noted in the appended Claims.
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